The shipping-crate (Fig. 71) should be strong, neat and cheap, with handles as seen in Fig. 71--such handles are also convenient in the ends of the hives, and can be cut in an instant by having the circular-saw set to wabble. With handles the crate is more convenient, and is more sure to be set on its bottom. The crate should also be glassed, as the sight of the comb will say: "Handle with care." Mr. Heddon also makes a larger crate (Fig. 72), which is neat and cheap. Muth's crate is like Heddon's, only smaller. It is well, too, to wrap the sections in paper, as thus breakage of one will not mean general ruin. However, this would be unnecessary in case the sections were of veneer and glassed, as before described. [Illustration: Fig. 72.] In groceries, where the apiarist keeps honey for sale, it will pay him to furnish his own boxes. These should be made of white-wood, very neat, and glassed in front to show the honey, and the cover so fixed that unglassed sections--and these, probably, will soon become the most popular--cannot be punched or fingered. Be sure, too, that the label, with kind of honey, grade, and name of apiarist, be so plain that "he who runs may read." Comb-honey that is to be kept in the cool weather of autumn, or the cold of winter, must be kept in warm rooms, or the comb will break from the section when handled. By keeping it quite warm for some days previous to shipment, it may be sent to market even in winter, but must be handled very carefully, and must make a quick transit. Above all, _let "taste and neatness" ever be your motto_. CHAPTER XVI. HONEY PLANTS. As bees do not make honey, but only gather it, and as honey is mainly derived from certain flowers, it of course follows that the apiarist's success will depend largely upon the abundance of honey-secreting plants in the vicinity of his apiary. True it is that certain bark and plant lice secrete a kind of liquid sweet--honey of doubtful reputation--which, in the dearth of anything better, the bees seem glad to appropriate. I have thus seen the bees thick about a large bark-louse which attacks the tulip tree, and thus often destroys one of our best honey trees. This is an undescribed species of the genus _Lecanium_. I have also seen them thick about three species of plant lice. One, the _Pemphigus imbricator_, Fitch, works on the beech tree. Its abdomen is thickly covered with long wool, and it makes a comical show as it wags this up and down upon the least disturbance. The leaves of trees attacked by this louse, as also those beneath the trees, are fairly gummed with a sweetish substance. I have found that the bees avoid this substance, except at times of extreme drouth and long protracted absence of honeyed bloom. It was the source of no inconsiderable stores during the terribly parched autumn of Chicago's great disaster. (See Appendix, page 286).